Day: August 3, 2016

Introduce the magic of chemistry with this easy at-home experiment. Does your toddler know that grapes can turn into… raisins?

When I presented this mystery to Travis and told him we needed heat in order to make them change, he immediately said, “We need an oven!” Chemistry 101, complete!

Slice as many grapes as you like in half, keeping in mind that you’ll end up with a significantly reduced volume of raisins, then have your toddler helper assist you in sprinkling the grape halves evenly over a baking sheet.

Or dumping them on:

Place the grapes in the oven at 200 degrees F for 2 and 1/2 hours. Now we wait!

To be honest, you can probably leave your grapes the oven in quite a bit longer (3 or 4 hours) for truly raisin-y raisins. Ours were a sublime mix that was half juicy grape, half condensed raisin, warm from the oven and very golden raisin-y in taste. Travis was thrilled with the result. The perfect dessert just before bed.

If you’re even more ambitious, you can profit from the summer weather to make real sun-dried raisins. Place your grapes in a sunny spot for several days (yes, days!) covered with cheesecloth to prevent them from getting dirty. I hope to try this some day when we live in an area with less car traffic.